The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for the 'Vote Fraud' Category

October 26, 2010

Somebody cue Capt. Louis Renault – Democrat election officials are up to the newest versions of their old tricks in trying to steal elections in both Nevada and North Carolina.

Las Vegas’ KVVU-TV reports that voters in Boulder City found that before they had voted for the United States Senate race, Harry Reid’s name was already checked on the touch-screen voting machines. Meanwhile, the New Bern Sun Journal reports that voters who attempted to select a straight-Republican ballot had a straight-Democrat ballot selected by the touch-screen voting machines.

October 15, 2010

Former ACORN worker Kevin Clancy pled guilty to a single charge of Falsely Procuring Voter Registration as a Party to a Crime today. Clancy was accused of submitting multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, and also was part of a scheme in which he and other Special Registration Deputies registered each other to vote multiple times in order to meet voter registration quotas imposed by ACORN.

Clancy is the 12th person to be convicted by the Election Fraud Task Force for electoin fraud, created by the Wisconsin Attorney General’s and Milwaukee County District Attorney’s offices.

July 22, 2010

Kevin Fischer points to a rather remarkable presentation by Milwaukee Alderman Jim Witkowiak during yesterday’s Government Accountability Board hearing. Wisconsin Eye brought its cameras to the meeting, which first dealt with challenges to the nomination papers, and moved to an indepemdent candidate for state Assembly who wanted to put “NOT the ‘whiteman’s bitch'” as her statement of principle on the ballot (the GAB board narrowly did not overturn the staff recommendation of not allowing it, with 3 of 5 present board members voting to allow it and the potential 4th/deciding vote for allowing it absent).

Immediately after that, the GAB began taking open public comments. Ald. Witkowiak was second on the list, and he explained how both same-day registration and a lack of an ID check can and does affect elections, even to the point of changing the results. I do recommend watching the entire appearance, which begins at the 1:50:50 mark of part 2 of WisEye’s coverage and runs to the end of part 2. A quick summary:

In the spring 2000 election, Witkowiak lost his re-election bid by 17 votes.

During the recount, after the campaign of Witkowiak’s opponent admitted to him they caused irregularities, Witkowiak found about 200 people who didn’t exist yet voted in the election, scattered between those who registered at the polls and those who claimed to be somebody they were not. The Milwaukee Election Commission did disallow a bunch of votes, but because there is no way to tell who the disqualified voters voted for, it was a random vote removal and thus did not change the result of the election.

An assistant city attorney who sat in on the 2000 recount process said that Witkowiak, “There’s more meat in this sandwich than I’ve ever seen before in my life.” Of course, this is Milwaukee, so nothing was done..

Witkowiak thought he was done with politics after 2000, but the residents of his district pulled him back into the race in 2004, and he once again became an alderman.

Fast forward to 2008. Witkowiak found that 400 people had registered at the polls in the spring primary, which for the first time in Wisconsin also included the Presidential primary (previously, the Presidential primary was held with the spring general election). Since Witkowiak had a spring general election to run in, he wanted to get a hold of those 400 to campaign to them. After a bit of a delay, the Milwaukee Election Commission gave them to him.

Witkowiak did a mailing to those 400, and about 80 of those mailings came back as undeliverable. He then went out to try to find those 80, and while he did find a few that existed, he couldn’t find about 75, with reasons ranging from people living at or managing apartments at the location never hearing of the alleged registered voter to the address being a non-residential property to the address simply not existing.

Witkowiak turned over the evidence to the Milwaukee County District Attorney and the Milwaukee Police Department. Guess what happened? If you said, “Nothing,” give yourself a prize.

March 20, 2009

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that 8 people in Clay County, Kentucky, including a then-sitting (and now-senior) circuit judge, the superintendent of schools in Clay County, the county clerk (one of 4 members of the county Board of Elections, along with the sheriff, and representatives from the Republican and Democratic Parties), the Democratic appointed member of said Board of Elections, and the Democratic and Republican election judges in Manchester, Kentucky for the 2002 and 2004 election cycles, were indicted yesterday for buying and corrupting elections between 2002 and 2006.

– The judge, Russell Cletus Maricle, and the superintendent, Douglas C. Adams, styled themselves as the political bosses of Clay County, causing the appointment of corrupt people to the elections board and “recruiting” local candidates to run on a “slate” that would be guaranteed to win election.
– The Democratic member of the election board, Charles Wayne Jones, appointed elections officers who would do the bidding of himself, Maricle and Adams, including buying votes and changing votes that voters thought were properly cast but were actually not (more on that last item in a bit).
– The clerk, Freddy W. Thompson, used his position, to which he was elected in 2002 (the start of this conspiracy) to instruct corrupt election officers on how to change votes. He also supplied money used to buy votes and also is charged with lying to a federal grand jury.
– William E. Stivers, the Democratic election judge in Manchester in 2002 and 2004, handled the marking of voters whose votes were bought, and also participated in extortion schemes.
– Paul E. Bishop, the Republican election judge in Manchester in 2002 and 2004, also handled the marking of voters whose votes were bought, and also hosted “fundraisers” for the vote-buying scheme.
– William B. Morris and Debra L. Morris, who own a sanitation business that has contracts with Manchester and Clay County, provided money for the vote-buying scheme.
– In addition, Maricle and Stivers are charged with instructing one of the two Manchester election judges in 2006, identified as “W.W.” in the indictment, as participating in the vote-switching scheme to lie to a grand jury. The other person, identified by the Herald-Leader as Charles “Dobber” Weaver, previously pled guilty to vote-switching charges.

While the vote-buying scheme was part of all three election cycles, the introduction of touch-screen voting machines in 2006 introduced a new, more-insidious method for this cabal to exploit. Summarizing Count 9, for which Maricle, Jones, Thompson and Stiver have been indicted:

– Thompson and Jones appointed Weaver and “W.W.” as the Republican and Democratic election judges in the Manchester precinct, and instructed them to “…tell voters that when they had pushed a button labeled ‘Vote’ that their votes had been cast, when, in fact, that function merely provided a review screen of the voter’s selections in each race, and that the further step of pushing the ‘Cast Ballot’ button was required.”
– When the misled voters left the voting booth with a ballot they thought they properly completed but hadn’t, one of those two would enter the booth, change the vote to the “slate” decided by Maricle, and then complete the casting of the ballot.

According to the Kentucky State Board of Elections, Clay County currently uses exclusively the ES&S iVotronic. While the current version does not use the verbiage mentioned in the indictment (it’s “review” to review and “vote” to finish casting the ballot), and I cannot confirm that the iVotronic was used in 2006, it otherwise does match up with the method described in the indictment. Further, the iVotronic does not produce a paper record, much less one that is actually handled by the voter, although there is now option for a “paper-under-glass” audit feature (again, I do not know whether this version is in use in Clay County).

December 3, 2008

Another Twin City precinct found another problem with their count of Senate ballots on election day. According to this article, Minneaplis has come up 133 ballots short in their recount, of the ballots that they recorded on election night. The Election Director came up with another lame excuse for how that “could” have happened and said she would verify the new numbers with Secretary of State. The reduction of the 133 ballots provided Coleman with a net pick up of 44 votes (apparently Franken had a 44 vote advantage in the 133 nonexistent ballots).

Minnesota has consistently been in the top 5 states of highschool graduation rates. It is similarly rated for college graduates. Apparently none of the folks in these “oops precincts” have accplished either of those mile stones.

November 4, 2008

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that a self-identified Obama campaign worker delievered food and bottled water to poll workers at Hampton School and presumably other North Side polling locations this afternoon. The individual, who left without identifying himself, at first said the bounty at Hampton School was for the poll workers, then said it was for voters waiting in line. While the law is apparently silent on delivery of food to poll workers (at least according to the Milwaukee Election Commission), it expressly prohibits the giving of “anything of value” to a voter to influence that voter’s choices.

I somehow missed this one earlier, but the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that between 20 and 50 voters in Wauwatosa’s District 22 received ballots for District 24. Susan Van Hoven, the deputy city clerk, says that the votes for the races common to both districts will be transfered to new ballots by poll workers and then recorded. There are two issues here:

– The two Districts are in different Assembly districts, with a contested race between incumbent Leah Vukmir and challenger Dave Hucke in District 22. The “solution” offered by Wauwatosa will disenfranchise those voters in that race. That is unacceptable, especially since a shift of, depending on the caucusing whims of freshly-“independent” Jeff Wood, two or three seats will change the balance of power in the Assembly.

– Mark Belling pointed out, even as I type, that Wauwatosa’s city clerk, Carla Ledesma, altered official election records to remove evidence of double voting by state Senator Jim Sullivan. I do not trust Wauwatosa’s election officials to correctly remark the ballots for the races that are common to the two districts.

I’ll repost the Tweets from gopfolk, who is monitoring the Racine polls. I do not know the Racine area all that well, so I don’t know where the polling locations are. I do recall problems in Racine in the past, so I will keep this updated. Any typos are in the Tweets, which came via text message (so don’t knock gopfolk for them)

Item #1 – WISN-AM reported Obama flyers present at a polling place at W. Villard and N. 68th St. Since I did not hear the report first-hand, I believe it is the Byron Kilbourn School at 5354 N. 68th St, which is the voting location for the 22nd ward of the 2nd aldermanic district. It is illegal to have any electioneering materials within 100 feet of a polling place in Wisconsin.

Item #2 – WTMJ-AM reported police are involved in a challenge of votes at a remote absentee ballot counting location in the 4200 block of N. Holton St.

John Fund reports that the head of the Milwaukee Police Department’s Special Investigations Unit has been told to send any investigators to the polls today, and that his unit will be disbanded. The unit’s crimes? Issuing a 67-page report that illustrated systemic vote fraud in Milwaukee in 2004, suggesting that same-day registration be eliminated and photo ID be required of voters, and uncovering evidence that the same will be going on this time, including GOTV groups having out-of-state workers register to vote in Wisconsin, a college dorm with 60 people who are not students, and at least 7 (probable-)illegal absentee ballots.

Un-fragging-believable. Actually, it’s all-too-believable because while city government is supposedly non-partisan, it is dominated by Democrats.

Revisions/extensions (11:09 am 11/4/2008) –Charlie Sykes interviewed Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn, who categorically denied the main parts of the report from Fund. While the Special Investigations Unit will not be assigned to the polls directly, they, as well as a 50-officer response squad, are on standby. I’ll leave it to you to decide what’s what.